Opening Closets

I enjoyed today's training in Bridgetown. It was entitled "Opening Closets" and was run jointly by Gay & Lesbian Community Services and Uniting Care West. The structure and content of the day was very good and very engaging. I'll be borrowing a few of their ideas next time I'm running a training session.

One chilling statistic they gave us was that 80% of people who identify themselves as transgender end up committing suicide!

While people may have different beliefs and attitudes on sexuality to me, I don't believe anything people do should be made so difficult to deal with that it leads to such a high percentage of people taking their own lives.

I don't feel like I'm expressing it very well, but what I'm trying to say is that regardless of beliefs or behaviours (within the law) people shouldn't pay with their lives for sexual or gender freedom.

Hopefully that makes sense!

If not, I can point you to their website for a clearer explanation of the issues.

The other important factor in a good training day is the quality of the food, and the fish and squid rings at lunchtime certainly added to my enjoyment. I even got to bring a doggie bag home of the leftovers!

I grabbed the opportunity to check out the shops at lunchtime, especially one of my favourites, Puddletown, and was not disappointed, I found a couple of cool new toys for my office.

By the time I got home at 6.00 Mrs Holt Press was already in bed, blaming "over-tiredness". I'm not sure of the cause, surely it couldn't have been my absence for the night!

I spent the evening watching TV- especially a disturbing expose of the Binge Drinking Culture amongst young people in Australia, on 4 Corners- and painting. I'm working on something very different to my normal style, far more ambitious, and I have to say it's not going very well! I know what I'm trying to do but I don't know how to do it, or more accurately I lack the skills knowledge and technique required, three fairly important elements it has to be said!

I will persevere but am not feeling optimistic about the project!

PD in Perth

Apologies faithful reader for the lack of blog action at Holt Press the last couple of days, I've been in Perth for some PD days and this is the first chance I've had to blog.
The PD went well, it's always good to get together with people, and some of the input was interesting and stimulating, especially the Bible studies by Ian Robinson this morning. Ian is the brother of Bruce, a good friend of urs and fellow Augusta Beach Mission team member.

I was able to combine painting and listening which was very relaxing and also helped keep me awake. Warm afternoons sitting and listening following a big lunch are often an invitation for the para-sympathetic nervous system to kick in and send a message to my brain saying "Sleep"! The painting was a good preventative measure.

I came up on Sunday night but left later than I'd planned because of delays in sorting things out with the kids; getting Paul picked up to spend a couple of days at Ben's, and cooking a BBQ dinner with Sophie and Jordan who stayed home together while I've been up here. I wanted to leave enough food for them not to starve in my absence.
All of this made my arrival in Perth pretty late, about 1.30am in fact, and to my surprise and horror, when I got to the place where I had arranged to stay the door was locked and I couldn't get in!!!! I felt it was too late to wake anyone up so I went looking for alternative accommodation but the only place I found open, The Esplanade wanted $276 for a room (booking in at 2.00am!), needless to say I declined! In the absence of any other options I found a place to park under the trees at Phoenix Primary School, lay the passenger seat down and slept in the car. Slept is a somewhat generous term to describe how I passed the night but I must have managed a few hours because the phone woke me at 8.00am. A rinse of mouthwash had to suffice for my morning ablutions, brekfast was courtesy of the Golden Arches, and I arrived at the PD day earlier than I ever have before!

I'm glad to say that my accommodation was much more satisfactory last night and I luxuriated in a bed and enjoyed a hot shower before day two of the PD.

Tonight has been most enjoyable, a BBQ dinner with Phil, Hugh and Broadie, the members of the Breakfast Club, in fact it's the first time in several meetings that all four members have been present. We talked about taxi driving, art, travel, returning to school (work) for two of us next week, in-laws, job prospects and of course, some secret men's business.
Phil's just gone to bed, leaving me to blog before retiring.

He made 7 picture frames for my paintings today which I hope will increase my chances of selling some at the Petticoat Lane Street Markets in Busselton tomorrow night.
We're going to Ikea to check out some other frames tomorrow morning before I head south for home.